Wednesday, 3 May 2017

Richard Nixon
coined the phrase “the silent majority” to describe the body of Americans he
saw as supporting his unpopular policies in Vietnam, while there was protest
and unrest in the streets all around. Nixon’s “silent majority” were the
classic WASPs – the White, Anglo Saxon, Protestants who duly delivered him one
of the biggest ever landslide election victories in 1972, and who supported him
loyally until almost the end of the Watergate Crisis that toppled him from
power.

Today, around the
world, there is a new, vastly different silent majority – the urban liberal.
They are diverse, well-educated, informed, successful, internationalist,
progressive and tolerant – and now disenfranchised. The rise of populist
politics has led the political parties that stood up for them, and whom they
traditionally supported in return, to abandon them in favour of the vocal shouting
of sectional interests and minorities. Urban liberals, young and old, male and
female, of varying ethnic and cultural backgrounds are being left aside as a
non-cause because they are seen as doing too well economically and socially to
be worried about.

The lack of
reaction to last week’s disparaging, almost sneering, comments about “middle
class welfare” from a former National Prime Minister shows just how far the
pendulum has already swung. Urban liberals are on their own. Unlike other
groups in society whose concerns are seen as legitimate and worthy of
attention, their issues of concern are dismissed as self-interest. While they
may differ in their specifics, social, family and economic issues affect urban
liberal families in just the same way as they do everyone else. Moreover, as
the group that pays most of the taxes, they have just as much right as every other
citizen to the attention and support of the system.

The values they
represent – compassion, tolerance, respect, inclusion and commitment to
progress – used to be seen as core New Zealand values. Now they are dismissed
as some sort of overly vague woolly thinking, out of step with the realities of
today’s world. Standing up against discrimination and oppression is held to be soft
handwringing, in a world where the threats of terrorism and the flood of
displaced refugees are so great that hard-line intolerance has become
acceptable. Promoting evidence based solutions to health and social issues is
increasingly seen as a cop-out and an excuse for inaction, when it is so
obvious what “really” works. Instinct and immediate reaction too often outweigh
the calm and considered response urban liberals are used to. The appeal to
unreason and prejudice is becoming the new norm.

Sadly, our
mainstream political parties have been swept along by this new rising tide of
populism, meaning neither of them are the bulwarks of reason and common sense
they used to be. Left without a voice, urban liberals are now left having to
look for new champions to represent them. Increasingly that voice will lie with
the smaller parties – ACT, the Maori Party and UnitedFuture. Yet, for many, ACT
is too ideological and flinty faced, and focused on the top income end of the income
spectrum for whom whatever the government does is of little consequence anyway because
they can afford to pay for the alternative. The Maori Party’s focus is
understandably on its core constituency, whose support it seeks, and indeed
deserves, as the genuine representatives of Maoridom.

This leaves
UnitedFuture, New Zealand’s version of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, as the
genuine, if currently small, voice of urban liberal New Zealand. Its stands on
tolerance, diversity, support for immigration and refugee resettlement, and its
empathy with the trials and tribulations of the middle classes sit comfortably
with urban liberal concerns. Its challenge is to attract their support as a
credible place to put their party vote to ensure their values are not only
represented in Parliament, but can also be brought in numbers to the government
table to restore balance and common sense. To do so, the silent majority will
have to be roused to act, to use its party vote to affect change. Otherwise the
silent majority will quickly become the alienated majority, and at a time of
declining political involvement anyway, coupled with the climate of fake news
and alternative facts, that could well be a body blow to our democracy.

Disclaimer: When I wrote last week about Labour’s looming
train wreck, I was certainly not expecting it to come as quickly as this week’s
list debacle!